Cyber Safety

4 Things I’ve Read Recently:

1. One high school newspaper created a fake Facebook profile of a student at their high school. In 14 days, this fictitious Facebook person had acquired 345 friends—none of whom knew that this person didn’t exist.1
2. Only 37 people rejected the friend requests for this fake friend.2
3. Eight people asked this fictitious person to become their Facebook friend.3
4. Ninety percent of students had accepted a friend request from a stranger.4

Here’s My Take on It:

One of the first questions kids might ask when they learn that one of their friends has a Facebook or MySpace page is, “How many friends do you have?” Social networking sites have added more pressure for kids to be popular. Because of this pressure, more kids are willing to “friend” someone online; often someone they don’t know well—or don’t know at all. The insightful study by the teenagers at the high school mentioned in the above section illustrates just how much kids feel pressured. Why would 345 classmates say “yes” to being an online friend of a fictitious fellow high school student and only 37 say “no”? (Yes, it’s true that they didn’t know that the person was fake, but shouldn’t that have made them question who this person really was before saying “yes” to being online friends?)

Kids are quick to notice who has five online friends, who has 300, and who has 4,000. (It’s shocking how many online friends some kids have.) But kids need to know that the quality of their online friends matters more than the quantity. Yes, both of my kids have “friended” kids they don’t know well, but at least they know them in person and talk to them in other places besides online. Both are aware of the pressure to increase the number of their online “friends,” and we keep talking about how to discern who to friend and who not to friend. In our home, it’s clear. You can become online friends only with people you already know in person. The internet is not a place for kids and teenagers to meet people.

Talk Further:

Ask your child: “How do you decide who to friend on social networking sites?”

Awesome article on Facebook usage and how many of us know the friends added in their friends’ list?

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2010-10-05 09:03.

Parents often feel as if they are invading their child’s privacy if they require them to “friend” them when they create a facebook account. That, in my opinion, is ridiculous. There is nothing private about Facebook. Once someone posts something, it could potentially go to hundreds of people in the blink of an eye. Many kids do not have their privacy setting set properly and even more parents have no clue how facebook even works. To be an effective parent today, it is imperative that you become an expert in all things Facebook, which includes “friending” your child! http://www.caseylight.wordpress.com

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2010-10-05 09:03.

Parents often feel as if they are invading their child’s privacy if they require them to “friend” them when they create a facebook account. That, in my opinion, is ridiculous. There is nothing private about Facebook. Once someone posts something, it could potentially go to hundreds of people in the blink of an eye. Many kids do not have their privacy setting set properly and even more parents have no clue how facebook even works. To be an effective parent today, it is imperative that you become an expert in all things Facebook, which includes “friending” your child! http://www.caseylight.wordpress.com

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 2010-06-18 12:58.

3

My daughter is 14 and a fairly new facebook user. A term of her facebook and computer use is that she uses strict privacy settings. Her mother and I are her ‘friends’ on facebook and can see what’s posted to her wall. Most of her activity is tagging each other’s photos and online facebook chat.

I talk to a lot of parents who are terrified of this online world and I don’t think we make good choices when we’re terrified or uninformed. One misleading thing about facebook is that anyone can join a group (such as Captain Highliner Junior High, Class of 2012) and then if you received a friend request from that person, you would assume that you just don’t remember them but that they are a classmate. I’ve seen a lot of adults do that as well. We’ve also taught our kids to be polite to other kids and not to ‘reject’ people. They are now having to interpret what that advice means in the online world.